… It’s a fine, overdue and appropriately polite start. It’s also unlikely to be enough, which is why the next step – for college football players in particular – is to consider a far bolder, impossible to ignore and historic move.

Get together and boycott a minor bowl game.

Nothing will rock college athletics like players refusing to play. And nothing will get the attention of people more powerful than university presidents than a canceled nationally televised game. It will be a bomb blast to the system – grabbing the attention of non-sports media, local and national politicians, and reformers of all kinds. A bowl boycott will get everyone talking, immediately.

Suddenly, university presidents who’ve spent decades dragging their feet on reform might be forced to act. It’s been an embarrassing series of scandals that’s helped shame college leaders into proposing a small $2,000 per year stipend ($38.46 a week) to cover some living expenses.

Pressure works with these people.

A lower-grade bowl game is essentially useless anyway.

It’s too much to ask a player to sit out a Final Four or a BCS title game – as has been plotted before. Even regular season games are difficult. Players want to play. They work too hard for the chance to compete. Having guys give up a shot at a championship isn’t realistic. No one wants to let down coaches and teammates.

Calling off some minor bowl – where the bowl executive is still pocketing $400,000-plus – isn’t such a sacrifice. It is, however, high profile enough to rock the system.

No one will remember who won the game anyway. The team that sits out for more equitable treatment will be hailed both immediately and forever – books will be written, documentaries will be filmed, history will lionize.

In other words, go ahead and boycott a game nobody cares about, because then they’ll care about it. Except they really won’t. Or something like that.

Wetzel’s already on record as wanting a 16-team playoff with representation from every skanky conference in America. Now he thinks the next best thing for the sport would be a player strike. They have a term for your ideal world, Dan. It’s called “the NFL”. Games are played on Sundays; check it out some time.

(By the way, it’s unrelated, but if in the comments you want to turn your snark guns on a Georgia Tech player who feels underpaid – “The things we go through, the hours we put in, what our bodies go through, we deserve some sort of (results),” Georgia Tech defensive end Denzel McCoy told the Associated Press. “College football is a billion-dollar industry.” – I’m not gonna stop you.)

Related

35 responses to “Dan Wetzel hates college football.”

Denzel? Come on, man. Isnt one of the big selling points at GTU “the value of a GTU diploma”? You’ll probably make that undergrad underpayment up in a couple of years, dog. Unless you get busted for weed, or murder, or flunk, errrrr, TRANSFER out, or something.

There’s no such thing as a “minor” bowl game. Every bowl game is important to someone. The kids playing in them get to play with roughly 1/4 of their team for the last time and they get to do it on national television. The coaches get to see what they can do with a month to prepare and without the week-to-week injuries and fatigue that plagues the regular season.

Granted, some times a team is disappointed in where they end up bowl-wise. But for every Georgia that’s not happy with how their season went, there’s a UCF chomping at the bit to take on an SEC team. They’re sure as hell going to remember who won that game. Do you think they’re going to pass that up just to pull some lame publicity stunt? Go fornicate yourself, Dan Wetzel. Go fornicate yourself on a stick.

This guy expects players on a lower tier bowl team (probably not choc full of guaranteed NFL talent) to give up their last, maybe their only, chance of the season to showcase their talents on national television (which would be the last chance ever for the seniors to get noticed by an NFL scout) so the next generation of players can have a stipend?

How many college football players come from low income households, and thus if they went on “strike,” have nothing to fall back on. They have no signing bonus nest egg to sit on, and there would be no huge contract at the other end of the strike tunnel. Meanwhile, they’d be forfeting a college education they would otherwise be receiving. Do you think a college football player who went on “strike” would ever be able to play college football again? Heck no. Who would take them? And so you’d have freshmen and sophomores who are screwed for the rest fo their college years. And how many of the juniors and seniors in a minor bowl game are going to get drafted (in lieu of obtaining their degree)? This would only hurt the players. There would be no tangible “reward” for stiking. College fans’ allegiance lies with the school before the players. They support the players whole heartedly as representatives of the school, but ultimately they typically are tied to the school for reasons other than the fact that they bring in high profile players. If the NCAA completely eliminated scholarships, UGA would still sell out. So, while it might create a huge clusterfuck for a school in the short run, they would survive and move on. The underpriviledged student athlete, however, would suffer greatly in the short term AND the long term, as this would not force any drastic change in the current policy. I think if this ever happened – which undoubtedly it never will – the players would found out in a hurry just how much they need the “owners.”

I don’t think paying players is financially viable, but I have a big problem with schools profiting from players’ likenesses and jersey numbers while preventing the kids from doing so. That’s something the greedheads running college sports could address if they were of a mind to do so.

Absolutely. Selling their likeness I think is a little tricky and while I do agree that it is insane that schools sell jerseys that are clearly a certain players without that player getting compensation, there is a real slippery slope there and it would certainly be a clear way that program could “pay” the star players with boosters buying jerseys by the box full.

The solution is for everyone to realize it’s not FAIR that the UGA’s and UT’s of the world were born with more money. All the other schools around the country PAY for their collective ability to have the books, history, research, etc. these big boys have benefited from to achieve their LUCKY success. We should TAX the big schools to pay their FAIR SHARE with lesser schools and equalize the opportunity for ALL of AMERICA!!! Then even the oppresed U of Phoenix and Donald Trump University could field competitive football teams where players are paid their fair, living wage.

OR…. we could let the “schools” with the most money contribute unlimited amounts of money to those who draft the revenue/tax/books/research code. These “schools” ARE INDIVIDUALS after all and should be able to contribute on an unlimited basis. We could then call the revenue generated by the richest “schools”…. oh say…..capital gains and require them to pay, as a percentage, roughly half of what the LAZY oppressed “schools” pay because ultimately the revenue would TRICKLE DOWN and level the playing field.

We could call it the AssDawg-Alito-Exxon Mobile-General Electric-Cheyney Rule……

I think the players should boycott. if that is what it takes to draw more attention to the hypocrisy that is big time college football and basketball. It is a business. A business trying to maintain a configuration that was set up in the days long before multi-billion dollar TV contracts; heck, before televisions were even in the public’s homes. The mental gymnastics necessary to justify and outright hypocrisy tolerated in trying to maintain this setup is bound to crumble at some point. Would be more healthy if all the parties involved, including the NFL, recognized big time college football for what it is and set up a minor league system. Possibly the college’s could sponsor their local team; collect lease payments for the use of their facilities. But jettison the minor leagues from the schools. Colleges could still have their football teams but the result would be closer to what goes on with minor league baseball and collegiate baseball.

Would be more healthy if all the parties involved, including the NFL, recognized big time college football for what it is and set up a minor league system.

Including the NFL? More like especially the NFL. But how does the boycott of a college bowl game get the NFL to step up and do what it should have been doing all along when the current system serves its purposes better?

Is this satire? Don’t get me wrong, I loved my time on Kudzu Hill, and even drove all the way to Omaha in 2001. I was also there the day the first pitch was thrown in what is now called Coolray Field. Minor league and college baseball are great, but to turn what happens in Sanford Stadium into anything resembling that combination is the proverbial splitting of the baby. No, King Solomon, let college football live, hypocrisy and all, thank you very much.

The Senator says it all when he mentions that no one can come up with a viable plan. While we should strive for idealistic goals, sometimes the world ain’t made that way. Ranting on about paying players without proposing a system that can work is useless rhetoric.

When the dust settles on alignment and when we have a clearly defined division at the top of FBS, I think we’ll see the GIA allowance, term, acceptance standards, and graduation requirements all go up. That will settle most of this issue, at least in terms of perception.

BTW – How many jerseys did Randy Moss sell at Marshall? Rice at Miss. Valley State? Crabtree at Texas Tech? Just curious.

Wetzel is the self-appointed voice of all Americans who don’t actually like college football but like the idea of telling college football what it’s doing wrong.

Bloviation for the Dawgnation

Quote Of The Day

“It brings back a great Bulldog running back in Thomas who has NFL playing experience and has had success as a college coach at multiple schools. He also inherits a position that has been built to an elite level by Bryan. And it gives Bryan the opportunity to return to coaching the position he played and the one where he cut his teeth serving as a graduate assistant under wide receiver coach John Eason here at UGA. It also provides him with a new experience as a passing game coordinator.” -- Mark Richt, AB-H, 2/16/15